This invention relates to the field of broadcast television programs. More particularly, the present invention provides a system and a method for television viewers to receive additional dialog and information, via a selected interface, related to characters on a specific broadcast television program.
Many television (TV) programs, such as daytime soap operas and situation comedies, are regularly watched by large audiences. Considering the growing number of TV sets in homes and the amount of time the average person spends watching TV, the size of the audience is expected to increase over time. Correspondingly, programs need to change and evolve to suit the ever-more diverse tastes and interests of this expanding audience.
Television networks, cable companies and independent TV program providers offer a myriad of TV program categories to capture the interest of viewers. These TV program categories include, for example, game shows, talk shows, situation comedies, sporting events, and soap operas. The ultimate goal is to provide interesting programming, in order to capture a large segment of the viewing audience.
One popular category of TV programming is the daytime soap opera. This type of program revolves around the day-to-day lives of characters featured within the program. A plot or story-line for a typical soap opera can span several episodes, possibly an entire TV season.
Each episode continues and develops the story-line further, and also develops the personalities of characters within the soap opera in an ever-expanding and detailed manner.
Soap operas, as well as other TV programs, often develop a core group of passionate and dedicated viewers. Many viewers religiously watch every episode of their favorite TV programs--loathing to miss even a single episode. With these viewers in mind, several magazines on the market summarize daily or weekly episodes of television programs for people who may have missed a particular episode. There are also 900 telephone numbers available that offer similar services for a fee. These are just two areas in which peripheral services have developed in response to TV viewer's demand.
Moreover, many TV viewers are extremely involved in their favorite TV program's story-line and characters. The writers of TV programs must weave complex and interesting plots to maintain the viewer's loyalty and interest in the program. In most instances, multi-faceted and well-developed characters are essential to the popularity (and longevity) of the program. Thus, a typical script for a TV program may be written, revised and edited numerous times to ensure that the result is interesting, realistic, believable or humorous.
Writers and producers spend a great deal of time developing characters and story-lines for TV programs that ultimately are not used in the broadcast version of the TV program. Many times several scripts, each with different plot twists and dialogue, are developed for each TV program episode. This is occasionally done to preserve the secrecy of the final broadcast episode. However, more often than not, these changes and alternate scripts are never broadcasted. Thus, the TV program producers and developers have no outlet to display this additional work-product (or by-product, as the case may be) to the viewing public.
To a certain extent, dedicated viewers of, for example, a soap opera, live vicariously through the trials and tribulations of the TV characters. Any additional information on their favorite TV program is of interest to these viewers, particularly, the thoughts, feelings and motivations that help define the TV characters.
However, the typical TV program format makes it difficult to develop the thoughts and feelings for a TV character in great detail. The story-line in a TV program must flow in a relatively quick and fluid manner. Unlike a novel, where an author can, between exchanges of dialogue, devote extensive time to a given character's thoughts, motivations, and considerations, the dialogue in TV programs must flow in a real-time manner. In many situations, this means that the writers must briefly summarize the thoughts or motivations of a character to keep the action flowing smoothly.
For example, a soap opera might have the lead female character saying to the lead male character: "I am going to New York for lunch. Would you like to join me?" However, her thoughts, which are not being broadcasted, may have her contemplating several devious things she is considering doing while in New York. These devious machinations may or may not occur depending upon the road the writers decide to follow for the story-line.
A wealth of non-broadcast material (from story-line changes and revisions) could be created and used to supplement the audio tracks of TV programs. In the example discussed above, a parallel audio track could be used to provide the additional thoughts of the lead female character to listeners who are simultaneously watching the TV broadcast.
In this regard, modern stereo televisions can receive a secondary audio channel (SAP). SAP technology has been used to provide descriptive video (DVS), which prints words on the television screen describing the action for the deaf. SAP has also been used to provide non-English audio tracks for the TV programs or sporting events, as well as a running commentary on TV movies. Some radio stations also broadcast audio tracks of live events (e.g. sporting events) or TV programs.
However, these conventional simulcasting systems provide everyone using the system with the same audio track; i.e., all viewers (or listeners) using these systems receive the same information. There is no way for a TV viewer to select individual information, for example, additional dialogue or thoughts of a particular character on a TV soap opera program. Moreover, these systems are typically provided for a monthly or annual service fee or are provided at no cost, because charging on a per-TV program or per-use basis is administratively difficult to process, or not possible at all.
Other systems have been developed using community antenna television facilities (CATV) that allow subscribers to interactively request still-television video frames with an accompanying audio message. However, the TV video and accompanying audio message provided by these systems are not related to, or synchronized to, broadcast TV programs.
Phone services (e.g. chat rooms and conference calling systems) also exist that allow callers to dial-in and listen to pre-recorded audio messages or even listen to live events in progress. When a caller uses a dial in service to listen to a sporting event, for example, which is being simultaneously broadcasted on TV, the radio audio track replaces the TV audio track. Thus, these services are not synchronized to the TV program's audio track and are not designed to supplement the dialogue for the TV program.
Until now, producers and broadcasters of TV programs have not been able to benefit from non-broadcast material developed in relation to a TV program's story-line or characters. Therefore, synchronized audio tracks providing supplemental information for TV programs have not been created. This supplemental audio information would be of great interest to devoted fans of TV programs. In addition, TV program broadcasters would have an alternative venue to bolster their TV program's characters, thereby creating even greater interest in the particular TV program. Accordingly, there is a need for a system that solves the above described problems. In particular, a system that permits TV producers to provide additional valuable entertainment content to interested viewers.